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Tuesday, 22 April 2014

An Angel over Rimini by Patrick Brigham

Synopsis

Detective Chief Inspector Michael Lambert has left the Thames Valley
Police Authority and is now working for Europol as a front line Europol Liaison
Officer at The Hague. He has left England and, because of his recent divorce,
now lives permanently in his holiday villa, in the Calvados region of Northern
France.

In An Angel over Rimini, his
first case for Europol involves the abduction of a little English girl from a
campsite in Riccione in Italy. It is a cold case, which has been reopened due
to public pressure, the intervention of the British Government and the
agitation of leading English newspapers.

DCI Lambert goes to Rimini to help the State Police to reinvestigate the
kidnapping of little Penelope Scratchford, only to find that the investigating
authorities are quite determined to blame the parents for her disappearance and
murder. It becomes clear - as his investigation progresses - that there are too
many unanswered questions and that much of the evidence has been ignored by the
original investigating officer, Vice Inspector Daniel Bosola.

Whilst in Italy, DCI Lambert also finds time to catch up with his father’s
mysterious past; during his wartime service in Bari as an RAF officer in a
Pathfinder Squadron. This reveals some interesting, if not spectacular
revelations about his father’s secret wartime exploits and his private peccadillo’s
too! For Michael Lambert it is also an awakening, and romance in the shape of
Countess Beatrix d’Aragona finally brings the Europol detective back to life emotionally,
somehow blotting out the past and his sterile marriage to his ex-wife, Arabella
Lambert.

Continuing his pursuit of the missing English girl, his investigations
take him to Greece and the established smuggling routes across the Evros River
Delta and up into Bulgaria. In Greece he learns about the horrors of organized illegal
immigration and people trafficking and the gangsters involved. He also finds
out, that these established smuggling routes are also Al Qaida’s way into
Greece and the EU.

In his travels he comes across corrupt Lawyers and Orphanages in
Bulgaria, but in so doing he also manages to pinpoint an established child
trafficking trail which ultimately leads him back to Central Europe. The
discovery of an illegal child adoption group in Germany and the criminals who
operate it, the information gleaned during his trip through Bulgaria, finally helps
DCI Lambert to discover if little Penny Scratchford is still alive or dead.